The applicant claims and requests a foreign priority, through the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industry Property, based on a patent application filed in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) with the filing date of Jan. 15, 2001, with the patent application number 2001-0002103, by the applicant. (See the Attached Declaration)
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tilt calibration method for use in a disc player, and more particularly, to a method for calibrating a tilt in a disc player in which a tilt in a disc player can be calibrated according to the crooked state of a recording surface on a disc which is loaded and rotated at high speed on a turntable.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a general disc player, a disc, for example, a compact disc or a digital videodisc is loaded on a turntable according to driving of a loading mechanism, and clamped by operation of a clamping unit. Information is recorded on a disc or reproduced from a disc, by driving of an optical pickup unit which reciprocates in the radial direction of the disc and irradiates beams onto recording pits on the disc.
A beam irradiated from an optical pickup unit should be irradiated accurately perpendicular to a recording pit on a disc in order to reproduce or record information from or on the disc. For this reason, the surface on a disc should be plane. However, a disc surface is bent in one direction or twisted in the process of manufacturing or distributing discs.
Thus, in the case that a disc surface is bent in one direction or has a surface of a twisted shape, a recording surface on a disc is crooked. As a result, a tilt occurs between the disc recording surface and the irradiated beam from the pickup unit according to the crooked state of the disc recording surface.
The tilt phenomenon causes an optical axis of the optical pickup unit to be slant with respect to the disc recording surface, and aberration to occur in a focusing beam, with a result that a frequency characteristic of light, in particular, a phase characteristic in this case is degenerated. Accordingly, a reproduction performance is remarkably lowered. Also, in particular, information is not reproduced from a disc of which the crooked state of the disc recording surface is severe.
A tilt calibration apparatus solving the above problems has been disclosed in Korean Utility Model Application No. 1999-22530, in which a guide rod for guiding an optical pickup unit in the radial direction of a disc is calibrated up and down to thereby calibrate a tilt.
By the way, in the case that a guide rod is calibrated up and down, an optical pickup unit moves askew so that a tilt is calibrated. However, since an overload occurs in a driving source of an optical pickup unit requiring a minute calibration according to a slant degree of a guide rod, a movable performance of an optical pickup unit is lowered, and thus a reproduction characteristic is influenced. Also, since a manual work is done to calibrate a tilt, a precise calibration is limited.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a tilt calibration method for use in a disc player in which the crooked states of the recording surface on a disc, and a turntable secured on a regulation plate, driven and rotated by a spindle motor and on which a disc is loaded, is made to rotate according to the crooked states of the recording surface on the disc, to thereby accurately optical beams irradiated from an optical pickup unit on the recording surface on the disc, and improve a reproduction feature.
To accomplish the above object of the present invention, there is provided a method for calibrating a tilt in a disc player, the tilt calibration method comprising: a disc insertion judgment step of judging whether or not a disc has been inserted onto a turntable; a focus error output time judgment step of judging a first focus error output time at which a focus error is output during ascending and a second focus error output time at which a focus error is output during descending, in which an optical pickup unit for irradiating beams onto a recording surface on the disc is made to ascend and then descend for a predetermined time, if a disc is inserted onto the turntable; a subtraction step of subtracting the first focus error output time from the second focus error output time, both of which have been judged in the focus error output time judgment step, and outputting a focus error output difference time; a disc recording surface judgment step of subtracting a reference focus error output difference time which is preset when the recording surface on the disc is normal from the focus error output difference time output from the subtraction step, and judging a crooked state of the recording surface on the disc; and a tilt calibration step of making the turntable rotate if the focus error output difference time is not same as the reference focus error output difference time, in the result of the disc recording surface judgment step, to thereby calibrate a tilt between the optical pickup unit and the disc.